The Planning Commission is facing a resource gap of Rs 75,000 crore for the ninth five year plan, even as the finalisation of the plan document is likely to be delayed by at least two months.
With the ninth plan coming into effect from April 1, 1997, the resource gap could pose a serious challenge to the Commission in earmarking sectoral outlay from the public sector investment.
It was, however, not clear whether the resource gap was on account of lack of commitment from the Union government for its share of financial assistance, Commission sources indicated.
As per the Commissions preliminary assessment, the available resources were likely to fall short of the projected outlay of Rs 875,000 crore by Rs 75,000 crore, the Commission said in a background paper prepared for the forthcoming economic editors conference.
Earlier, differences between the finance ministry and the Commission were reported over the amount to be earmarked as budgetary support with the former agreeing to commit only Rs 300,000 crore as against the projection of Rs 375,000 crore by the later.
The budgetary support issue had become contentious at the first meeting of the National Development Council, chaired by the then Prime Minister. H D Deve Gowda. Senior officials of the Commission said that finance minister P Chidambaram had agreed to the required budgetary support of Rs 367,000 crore at the last meeting of the council, in which approach to the ninth plan was finalised.
The officials, who requested anonymity, said that the resource gap would be at the most between Rs 10,000 crore to Rs 15,000 crore, that too on account of shortfall in the states share. They emphasised that there were no differences between the Commission and the finance minister over the budgetary support, but added that the Centres share was subject to additional resource mobilisation and containment of non-plan expenditure.
On its part, the commission had made some suggestions including revision of royalty rates to help augment the states resources. Earlier, the steering committee on resources of the Commission had felt that resource mobilisation could not go beyond Rs 800,000 crore, they said and added that subsequently it was felt that resources for the projected outlay could be mobilised on the strength of extra resource generation by energy and telcom PSUs.
